Endless Bliss

An eerie silence followed the two as they walked together in the hallway, where grimy prisoners peered with intrigued eyes at the unusual woman shuffling behind the warden.

Talissa scoured her mind for an answer she could fathom. "For what reason?"

The man guiding her kept his mouth clamped shut, too focused on enumerating the crevices in the ground as they strolled by the cells of unkempt criminals.

She jerked her head to the side with a blunt crack and rubbed the nape of her neck. "The ex-dowager empress has not bothered anyone since her imprisonment. There is no need to make a debacle of a mentally unstable grown woman. The mere idea of the execution is tasteless."

"Do you wish to extend her suffering?" quipped the warden. "She is not happy here."

The bait, laid generously on a hot dish, was consumed.

"Perhaps, she is," Talissa suggested.

"You speak nonsense. How could anyone be happy in prison?"

Her footsteps came to a halt. "Then, why do you look so blissful?" The warden's expression glittered with a peculiar tranquility. "Would you really be so happy to be in this dire situation?"

The warden turned back, a pair of dilated pupils wavering on her. "What do you mean?"

The tip of Talissa's keen blade hovered over the fat of his neck, and she tugged on the rope that bound the warden's arms.

"You aren't aware of what's happening?" she questioned with concern.

Carefully, Talissa slipped her hand by his windpipe to press her fingers.

"Slow pulse. It's as I thought," she murmured. "You took something that doesn't belong to you."

"I've done no such—"

Talissa shoved two fingers down his throat. No gag or reaction. The disbelief she had was immeasurable. 

"Take it out," she ordered. "Take it out!"

The priceless remedy continued wasting away in his stomach, and she couldn't take it back from him.

"I can smell the Tofana serum from your breath. You spineless thief.... I went through so much to deliver countless bottles to my stepmother miles away and you took them?"

Had the serums arrived to its proper recipient, the woman she saw in that miserable cell would have come to her senses much earlier. It cost Talissa a number of grueling months to wear away the spell cast upon her by that boy—even with the assistance of Marsilia Tofana's concoctions.

Her hand shot towards his droopy face, the grip contorting his features and muffling his words. The whites of his eyes pooled around the beady brown irises that stared without a tremble of terror. Slamming his body to the wall as if he were a child's ragdoll, Talissa watched with dissatisfaction as Victim #23 weakly bent at the knees and thudded face down on the crumbling floor.

For a final endeavor, Talissa dropped the keys she swiped from the warden's office and kicked them towards the huddled figure attentively scraping at the concrete.

Her stepmother may have deserved to remain here for all the pain she's inflicted, but Talissa knew better than to blame someone under the influence of a manipulative spell.

"You can choose to leave when you are ready."

No response.

"Tofana Boutique—in Vie. He is waiting for you there."

Again, no response.

Talissa didn't waste another moment lingering by the cell. When her footsteps grew faint in the distance, the prisoner stretched a thin arm towards the shining metal.

Using its edge, the woman Talissa used to call 'Stepmother' added a final streak on the concrete.

I die here.